Newsletters

A new video from Dr Helena Lee, Associate Professor of Opthalmology.

Helena Lee was recently a speaker at a hugely successful new TED-style event, AMSlive, organised by The Academy of Medical Sciences. We are delighted to share her talk here.

Congratulations to Mr Parwez Hossain

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh have awarded the King James IV Professorship to Parwez in recognition of his research work in corneal diseases in Southampton.
Well deserved and this proves how fortunate we are to have such excellent research being undertaken in our University.

Research funding for study into early stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD)

Professor Andrew Lotery has been successful grant application to the Wellcome Trust

The five-year research project will teach computers to analyse high resolution images of the inside of the eye to identify what eye changes appear in patients with AMD and identify the structural changes that lead to and are associated with cell degeneration in the retina in patients with early AMD.

Papers recently published

Well done Arjuna - recent publication in Cells explaining how 3D reconstructions were used in the University of Southampton to assess how damage to the Retinal Pigment Epithelium is caused.

Congratulations to Eloise Keeling (Ellie) on the publication of her work in PubMed . A great piece of work and well done from us all.

Stargardt's disease

A recent press release which can be viewed here gives details of a clinical trial which will be taking place in Southampton in due course.

Stargardt’s disease, also known as Stargardt‘s macular dystrophy, affects the area of the retina called the macula and causes a reduction in central vision.

It is the most common form of juvenile macular degeneration and affects around one in 10,000 children who suffer a gradual decline in vision which leads to blindness in adulthood. The press release gives full details.

The study has been funded by the European Union. However there are still many additional steps to be taken before the study begins. These steps include completion of the study protocol and obtaining ethics approval. To ensure the best possible outcome from the study all of these steps take time and therefore the project is unlikely to start until the end of 2018 or possibly in 2019, once the protocol has been finalised on who might be eligible for the study.

Albinism and Age-related macular degeneration

Mr Jay Self (Consultant Ophthalmologist) and members of the vision research team are interested in discovering why, to their knowledge, Albinism and Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) have never been seen in the same patient, although AMD affects 1/3 of people over the age of 75.

Also the retina loses function in older animals with Albinism but, apparently, not in humans.

If anyone reading this post is aged over 60 and has Albinism, please contact Jay by email at J.E.Self@soton.ac.uk . If you know anyone who meets this criteria please do share our message with them and ask them to make contact with Jay. Thank you.

Congratulations to Mr Parwez Hossain

on being part of a team who won an award for participation in an interfaculty collaboration within the University of Southampton’s Network for AntiMicrobial Resistance & Infection Prevention (NAMRIP). The participants are from Electronic Engineering; Molecular Microbiology; Ophthalmology (Eye Unit) and Southampton University NHS Hospital Trust. It has produced a flourishing collaboration with Lighthouse in Kenya, and with the Christian Medical College (Vellore, India). The collaboration has developed a novel portable device, using the application of a technology known as electrical impedance, to identify different types of bacteria with no sample preparation and ‘instant’ detection from, literally, a drop of specimen.